As Prakash Javadekar Takes Over HRD From Smriti Irani, Twitter Finds A Reason To Cheer

Tuesday’s Cabinet rejig saw the induction of 19 new names as Ministers of State and one name – Prakash Javadekar – getting elevated to a Cabinet rank. In the evening the ‘big bomb’, as some in the media fraternity call it, was dropped.

Javadekar took over as the new Human Resources Development minister from Smriti Irani. Irani has now been moved to the Textiles Ministry.

PTI

That’s big news for the Twitter-verse. Early in the morning of July 6, the hashtag #ByeByeSmriti started trending. Of course the opposition too had joined in.

Finally PM Modi gets a wisdom for education system of India and removed Smriti Irani from sensitive HRD Ministry #ByeByeSmriti

Irani’s two-year tenure as the HRD minister was marred by a number of controversies, prominent of which were the JNU row, the NIT-Srinagar row, and the suicide of Rohit Vemula.

Critics of the Modi government questioned Irani’s qualifications to head the HRD. The Indian Express reports that the HRD ministry under Irani and the PMO were not finding a common ground over the “world-class universities” project besides a host of other issues.

But this report claims that Irani’s move to the Textiles could be a calculated one ahead of the UP Assembly polls in 2017 given that the Congress has now made Priyanka Gandhi their campaigner in the state.

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Given the scare Irani gave to Rahul Gandhi in Amethi in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, shifting her to the Textiles appears to be a tactical move indeed. She could be more fiery on the battlefield of UP politics than in the HRD.